A 43-year-old British woman is accused of killing her children at a Spanish resort days after her husband, a fugitive, was extradited to England to face pedophilia charges.
According to reports, Lianne Smith, checked into a hotel in the resort town of Lloret de Mar on Saturday, along with her two children, Rebecca, 5, and Daniel, 11 months.
On Tuesday afternoon, Smith went to the reception desk and asked staff there to phone an ambulance and police.
When she was asked why, El Pais reported that she answered, “You will see.”
When emergency services went to her room, they found the children laid out on a bed in Smith’s room, neatly covered by a blanket. Both were dead. Initial reports suggest they were asphyxiated.
It has been suggested that Smith feared she would lose her children now that her husband had been caught. El Pais also reported that she had confessed to the crime in a note.
On Wednesday morning, her husband, Martin Smith, appeared in a British courtroom to face 13 charges relating to assaults on minors over a 10-year period, from 1995 to 2005.
Smith is the father of the infant, Daniel. A second, unnamed man was said to be on his way to Spain to identify Rebecca, his daughter.
Martin Smith claimed to be a professional medium, and had appeared on a reality-TV series exploring haunted houses.
Smith skipped bail in January 2008 and had been on the run since. His wife disappeared shortly before that. Authorities suspected the pair was living under false names in Spain’s touristy Costa Brava region.
Two weeks ago, Smith was apprehended in Barcelona.